Answered By: Gabe [Research & Writing Studio]

Last Updated: Dec 12, 2017Views: 745

This depends on the source. In some cases you do not have an author as a person, but still have an author that is referred to as a corporate author. A corporate author is any instance where an information source comes from an organization and does not have an author listed (whenever a person's name is listed, use them for the author). A good example of this is the Libraries' hompage. There is no author listed, so if you were to cite that webpage the corporate author would be Western Washington University Libraries (APA, pp. 176-177).

In some cases you do not have a person or corporate author (It is likely that you would only use this type of source sparingly since not having an author can be a red flag that the source may not be reliable). Use the title of the document in the place of the author position (APA, p. 183).

In some other cases a source is listed as anonymous. When that happens use Anonymous in place of the name in the reference list and in your in-text citation (APA, p. 177 & 183).